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Intelligence is diverse and dynamic
Diverse
Intelligence is diverse because people think in all the ways they experience the world. They think visually, in sound, and kinesthetically, in abstract terms, and in movement.
Dynamic
It is dynamic because the brain is wonderfully interactive and isn't divided into compartments. Creativity more often than not comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things, so a mind trained in one narrow channel loses some of what makes it inventive.
Distinct
It is also distinct: each person's intelligence has its own shape. Gillian Lynne, who went on to choreograph some of the most successful musicals ever staged, was a child who had to move to think, and a classroom built for sitting still read that as a problem.
Where did the idea of multiple intelligences come from?
The Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner proposed the theory in his 1983 book Frames of Mind. He argued that human intelligence includes several distinct capacities, such as linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal, and later added a naturalist type. Gardner drew on evidence from brain-damaged patients, prodigies, and studies across cultures. The theory remains popular with teachers, though many psychologists dispute whether these capacities are truly independent.
How do different fields spark new ideas together?
Steve Jobs said in his 2005 Stanford commencement speech that a calligraphy class he took at Reed College shaped the typography of the first Macintosh. The class had no practical use at the time, and the design ideas it gave him carried over into computer fonts years later. The Macintosh, released in 1984, was among the first personal computers to offer a range of typefaces with proportional spacing. Historians of innovation often point to examples like this, where one field's techniques solve another field's problems.
What is the brain doing when it thinks in movement?
Researchers who study embodied cognition have found that motor areas of the brain become active when people think about actions, even without moving. Studies using brain imaging have shown activity in motor regions when people read verbs like kick or grasp. Dancers and athletes show distinct patterns of activity when they imagine or watch movements from their own discipline. These findings are part of a broader research literature on how the body takes part in thinking.
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